philip pullman books northern lights trilogy

However, the dæmons of witches and shamans can remain awake while their humans sleep. Typically dæmons and their humans are conscious or asleep at the same time. Form ĭæmons supposedly occur in every world, but in Lyra's universe they take an external shape, even if they are not corporeal. Pullman says his inspirations for dæmons were Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo's Young Woman with a Macaw and Hans Holbein the Younger's The Lady and the Squirrel, all portraits in which there seemed to be 'a psychological link between the person and the creature'. Physical contact with another person's dæmon is taboo. Dæmons are usually of the opposite sex to their human, though same-sex dæmons do exist.ĭæmons frequently interact with each other in ways that mirror the behaviour of their humans, such as fighting one another when their humans are fighting, or nuzzling one another when their humans embrace, and such contact between dæmons is unremarkable. During adolescence a person's dæmon undergoes 'settling', an event in which that person's dæmon permanently and involuntarily assumes the form of the animal which the person most resembles in character. Pre-pubescent children's dæmons can change form voluntarily to become any creature, real or imaginary. Dæmons have human intelligence, are capable of human speech-regardless of the form they take-and usually behave as though they are independent of their humans. Dæmons are the external physical manifestation of a person's 'inner-self' that takes the form of an animal. Leonardo da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine (1489–91) was one inspiration for Pullman's dæmon Ī dæmon ( / ˈ d iː m ən/) is a type of fictional being in the Philip Pullman fantasy trilogy His Dark Materials.

Philip pullman books northern lights trilogy